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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28264527">rqg ao3 in 2020</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/celsidebottom/pseuds/celsidebottom'>celsidebottom</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fandom - Fandom, Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Nonfiction, Not a fic, fandom stats</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:41:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,051</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28264527</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/celsidebottom/pseuds/celsidebottom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter 1: general trends of when/how much fic was posted<br/>Chapter 2: character trends<br/>Chapter 3: ship trends<br/>Chapter 4: additional tag trends</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>- Over the course of this year, over 150 fics were deleted, for various reasons. Because there aren't so many RQG fics, this makes quite a big impact from a fandom stats perspective. In cases where I've recorded fics that were later deleted, I've kept the deleted fics in the numbers, because that more accurately reflects what fics were being posted at the time. This means that during November, when a lot of fics were deleted at once, it looks like there was a big change in fic trends, which isn't actually the case, so please keep that in mind.<br/>- I've included image descriptions for all the graphs<br/>- Please let me know if the images aren't working right, this is my first time trying to upload images into a fic ^^'</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p>
<p>At the beginning of the year, there were 418 fics in the archive. There are now 1884, which is an increase of 351%. For comparison, the number of fics on AO3 as a whole increased from roughly 5.6 million to 6.8 million, a 21% increase.</p>
<p>The month with most fics posted was October, with 296 or 9.9 per day. Following is November [256, 8.5 per day] and May [184, 6.1 per day]. October was a busy month for fandom in general, with prompt events like kinktober or flufftober, and also had Azu Week and the explosion of fics following episode 174.</p>
<p>The month with least fics posted was January, with 57 or 1.8 per day, which is fair given it was a much smaller fandom then. Following is August [85, 2.7 per day] and September [90, 2.9 per day]. These months had the airship and body swap episodes [164-172] which didn't contain much action and had a mixed fandom reception.</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>This graph shows the number of fics posted per day. The days with the most fics posted were:</p>
<p>1. 2nd May, 35 fics posted as part of the RQ Exchange, although some were backdated so won't show up on this day.</p>
<p>2. 14th October, 22 fics posted. This was the public release day of episode 174.</p>
<p>3. 18th November, also 22. This was day 3 of A Wilde Week and the public release of episode 176.</p>
<p>4. 23rd March, 19 fics posted, mostly for Femslash Week.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Characters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>This graph shows the proportion of fics featuring the most popular characters - the PCs except Bertie, and Wilde. As you can see, Zolf was consistently the most popular character to write fic about. Wilde and Cel also got increasingly popular over the year, with Wilde starting the year as the 5th most popular character and ending as the 2nd. Hamid, Sasha, Azu and Grizzop got less popular over the year, Hamid the most so, probably related to the mixed reactions to the kobold arc and general decreasing interest in Zolf/Hamid. It's not strictly relevant to 2020 but I find it interesting to note - Sasha and Grizzop's decreasing popularity in fic started around episodes 120-126, so it's not [purely] because of Ancient Rome-related reasons. There's also no obvious increase in fic about Sasha in May, when 156 aired, or in June during Roman Rogues. Cel's popularity started increasing during the airship episodes, when some of their backstory was hinted at.</p><p>
  
</p><p>Carter and Barnes both had a few fics before their re-introduction, and became much more popular during May which was the 154-157 quarantine episodes. Of the kobolds, Skraak and Sassraa have the most fic; "The kobolds" as a group character tag has 8 fics, Meerk has 6, Draal has 2 and Natan has 1. Of the other airship crew, Siggif has 2 fics and Friedrich has 1, there's not much fic about the airship crew/arc in general.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. relationships</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>RQG is kinda an outlier fandom as it has a large proportion of Gen [non-shippy] fics compared to AO3 as a whole, however this is changing:</p><p>
  
</p><p>There could be many reasons for the decreasing popularity of the Gen category, for example as the RQG fandom gets bigger it will probably reflect the greater focus on romance found in general fandom. For the F/F category, Azu was the only woman around until July, so there wasn't much canon material to work with, although this reason doesn't hold up so well after Kiko was introduced as a love interest. With more nonbinary characters in canon, especially Cel "many benefits of having a physical form" Sidebottom, the Other category is likely to get more popular. The canon significance of the Zolf/Wilde relationship will probably also lead M/M to get more popular.</p><p>First, non-romantic ships:</p><p>
  
</p><p>There's a lot of lines so this graph can be a bit hard to read, sorry ^^'</p><p>Basically, almost all the platonic relationships with the main characters have got less popular over time, except the ones with Wilde in them. This is probably because following Ancient Rome, a lot of these relationships will never appear in canon again, although that is also true for Sasha &amp; Wilde which has got more popular over time. Zolf &amp; Wilde has got more popular, and the next graph shows how fic about the romantic relationship between them has also increased a lot.</p><p>Now romantic ships:</p><p>
  
</p><p>Zolf/Wilde has like, completely taken over Zolf/Hamid [and every other ship] as the most popular ship in the fandom ^^ . Ships like Azu/Sasha, Zolf/Hamid and Ed/Tjelvar were popular in early RQG fandom but aren't so popular now, although a lot of Azu/Sasha fics were written in March as part of Femslash Week. Interestingly, lots of things have levelled out in December, I'm not sure about the reasons for this.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. additional tags</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>These are the most popular additional tags as of December. As you can see, canon divergence is the most popular AU. In total, 15% of RQG fics are tagged with some kind of AU:</p><p>
  
</p><p>RQG has a reputation as being very angsty, but the fanworks tend towards fluff:</p><p>
  
</p><p>April and November were the only two months with more fics tagged Angst than Fluff - April had the post-Shoin episodes and November had the post-airship crash episodes. Happy fun times! :)</p><p>Fics tagged Fluff are 2.3 times more likely to be Azu/Sasha than fics in general, and 1.9 times more likely to be F/F.</p><p>Fics tagged Angst don't have such strong trends as Fluff fics that I noticed, but they are 1.2 times more likely to be about Wilde or Zolf/Wilde.</p><p>
  
</p><p>Drabbles, fics with exactly 100 words, are getting popular in RQG. 28% of the fics in the Drabble tag are "Double Drabbles" of 200 words, and 7% are "Drabble and a half", 150 words.</p><p>Suitably for a podcast fandom, 3.7% of RQG fics are podfics, compared to 0.6% of fics on AO3 overall. 1.6% of fics are or contain fanart, compared to 0.9% of fics overall.</p><p>
  
</p><p>Zolf's sexuality was confirmed by Ben in November, which didn't really change things a lot. Fics exploring Zolf's asexuality correlate with Explicit-rated fics, which are also increasing in popularity;</p><p>
  
</p><p>Not my cup of tea but y'all have fun ^^</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>That's it for now - hope you enjoyed and if there's something else you wanna see or you feel I've missed, let me know in the comments ^^</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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